Posted on 12/22/19
| News Source: Algemeiner
The Executive Order that President Donald Trump signed on December 11 provides Jewish students the same protections granted to other minority groups under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. It does so by recognizing that Judaism is more than a religion, and that even non-practicing Jews can be targeted with discriminatory acts based on their identity. The Order also adopts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, that includes, “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews” and prohibits “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
The Executive Order was not enacted in a vacuum or as a proactive measure to avoid hypothetical cases of antisemitism. It was signed in response to the relentless harassment of Jewish students on college campuses that is being orchestrated by members of the “progressive” movement. And it was signed to compensate for the apparent inability or unwillingness of most university administrators to intervene.
The harassment of Jewish students on college campuses has been a concerted campaign, carried out by national organizations, enabled by university administrators, and encouraged by a United States congresswoman. And now, with their brazen disregard for murdered Jews, “progressive” leaders from Congress to campus have revealed new and chilling dimensions to their own antisemitism.
My alma mater, Oberlin College, offers a vivid example. In the past three years, academic departments, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and Students for a Free Palestine at Oberlin have hosted a steady stream of well-known anti-Israel activists who espouse antisemitic rhetoric, including Robin Kelley, Ali Abunimah, Nyle Fort, Eli Valley, and Norman Finkelstein. Despite several requests from Jewish students and from myself to bring Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth L. Marcus to campus to broaden students’ understanding of the complex issues surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the administration offered no assistance. Read more at Algemeiner